Year in Review – and Feedback, Feedback!

(Psst, if you missed the Harry Potter news, click HERE.)

Traditionally, Friday is Interview Day here at Writer Unboxed, but we’re taking a break today as we finish putting the polish on several interviews and prepare for the holiday. We also thought this might be a great time for a mini year-in-review!

Kath and I started Writer Unboxed mid-January of this year. Since then, we’ve written nearly 160 posts related to the craft of writing–we’ve talked books, we’ve talked movies, we’ve talked NaNoWriMo. We’ve posted 18 times on research (click HERE) and over 100 times on real-world (but writing-related) issues, like carpal tunnel syndrome, influential characters, and Linktopia!

In September, we moved the site from Blogger to the user-friendly WordPress (we so don’t miss our posts disappearing on us or spending 30+ minutes trying to load a picture!). When we made the move, some wonderful partners joined us: women’s fiction author and wordmith extraordinaire, Marsha Moyer, and the multi-talented Victoria Holmes–editor of the super popular Warriors series for tweens and author of her own YA novels. Sadly for us, Jack Slyde, who began with us in September as well, left shortly thereafter to focus on his new baby, new manuscript and new site. (We wish you all the best, Jack–AKA Lee Carlon!) We had our very first WU contest and gave a brand spankin’ new AlphaSmart (plus Godiva) away to unboxed writer and fellow blogger, Kelly Boyce!

Kath and I are particularly proud of the interviews we’ve brought to Writer Unboxed. Since January, we’ve posted 25 interviews–many of them two- and three-parters. Unboxed authors have spanned the genres, including fantasy (Juliet Marillier, Sarah Micklem, Patricia Bray & Anne Harris), romance (Lydia Joyce, Allison Brennan & Deidre Knight), crime fiction (Jason Starr), literary fiction (Audrey Niffenegger & Hal Duncan), women’s fiction (our own Marsha Moyer) and children’s literature (Cornelia Funke, Erin Hunter & our own Victoria Holmes).

We’ve also interviewed a slew of industry pros, including translator Anthea Bell, publishers Barry Cunningham and Working Partners, listserve goddess Charlotte Dillon, screenwriting consultant Michael Hauge, publicist Theresa Meyers, agent Deidre Knight, online romance critics Smart Bitches who Love Trashy Books, scam-avoidance professionals Writer Beware!, and editors Ray Rhamey and again our own Victoria Holmes.

Kath and I have enjoyed doing these interviews immensely, and though we intend to keep them coming we’d like to ask you a few important questions:

What would you like to see? Who would you like for us to interview? What genres would you like to learn more about, and what industry nooks would you like for us to investigate?

We want Writer Unboxed to remain the place you visit for empowering writerly information, but we’re wondering if you’d like to see more of a mix in topics?

How would you feel about:

* Talk prompts, possibly dishing about a controversial topic or two on a weekly basis? Like this one: How on earth is it that a publishing company is actually willing to PAY readers to rate their books with 5 stars on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and the like? Shameless? (HT to Smart Bitches for this one.)

* Visual prompts, where we’ll post a strange or otherwise enticing picture, and you can blog it up, flexing your creative muscles here at WU for everyone to admire (ooh, ahh).

* Vanity Day, where we all chime in with what we’ve personally been up to with our wips. Here we can fess up on word counts, or how many episodes of What Not to Wear we’ve seen in the last week while our keyboard collected dust.

Have an idea for a guest blog post? Give us a holler. We may just throw the spotlight on you for a day. Email any ideas you have to us at writerunboxed(at)staging-writerunboxed.kinsta.cloud, leave a comment here, or use the comment form accessible at the top right of the site.

We’ll be taking next week off, to recharge our bloggery selves and think up what we’re going to do in 2007, but we really want to say THANKS. Thanks for being here and for tuning in to what we have to say on a regular basis. Thanks for commenting when the mood strikes, too. We wouldn’t do any of this without you.

And so…

Happy New Year to all, and to all a good write! (That clever bit shamelessly stolen from S. William.)

Therese Walsh

Therese Walsh (she/her) co-founded Writer Unboxed in 2006 and is the site’s editorial director. She was the editor of WU’s only book, Author in Progress, and runs the Writer Unboxed UnConference.

Her second novel, The Moon Sisters, received starred reviews and was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal and Book Riot.

Learn more about Therese on her website, and sign up for her newsletter to be among the first to hear about any new projects.

www.theresewalsh.com/